Again I must ask…..what about the Constitution where it says we have a right to speedy trial and face our accusers? You know, the 6th amendment ….being terrorists doesn’t change that, especially American terrorists. Even then the Constitution applies. Folks we are seeing the Constitution being trampled on weekly if almost daily now and that is not good. For those that think it is outdated, if you could see the future and what it holds without the current Constitution, you’d change your mind real fast about changing what we’ve had for over 200 yrs., it’s worked pretty good for us.

The White House has filed an appeal in hopes of reversing a federal judge’s ruling that bans the indefinite military detention of Americans because attorneys for the president say they are justified to imprison alleged terrorists without charge.

Manhattan federal court Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in May that the indefinite detention provisions signed into law late last year by US President Barack Obama failed to “pass constitutional muster” and ordered a temporary injunction to keep the military from locking up any person, American or other, over allegations of terrorist ties. On Monday, however, federal prosecutors representing President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta filed a claim with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of eliminating that ban.

The plaintiffs “cannot point to a single example of the military’s detaining anyone for engaging in conduct even remotely similar to the type of expressive activities they allege could lead to detention,” Obama’s attorneys insist. With that, the White House is arguing that as long as the indefinite detention law hasn’t be enforced yet, there is no reason for a judge to invalidate it.

Reuters reports this week that the government believes they are justified to have the authorization to lock alleged belligerents up indefinitely because cases involving militants directly aligned against the good of the US government warrants such punishment. Separate from Judge Forrest’s injunction, nine states have attempted to, at least in part, remove themselves from the indefinite detention provisions of included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA.

“[T]here are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law that they ought to just say, ‘We’re not going to appeal,’”attorney Carl Mayer said. “The NDAA cannot be used to pick up Americans in a proverbial black van or in any other way that the administration might decide to try to get people into the military justice system. It means that the government is foreclosed now from engaging in this type of action against the civil liberties of Americans.”

The original plaintiffs, who include Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges, have asked Just Forrest to make her injunction permanent. Oral arguments in the case are expected to begin this week.

In a campaign stop at Rollins College in Florida last week, Barack Obama suggested that the middle class should resent Mitt Romney’s tax proposals:

“I want everybody to understand here — he’s not asking you to pay an extra $2,000 [in taxes] to reduce our deficit; he’s not asking you to pay an additional $2,000 to help care for our seniors; he’s not asking you to pay an additional $2,000 in order to rebuild America or to fight a war,” the president said. “He’s asking you to pay more so that people like him can pay less.”

But here is the actual truth: Mitt Romney is not asking the middle class or anyone else to pay more taxes. Mitt Romney is proposing to cut tax rates for everyone, across the board. That would finally liberate the economy for a long overdue recovery. Increased revenues from that booming economic growth, combined with savings from cutting Obama’s runaway spending and closing loopholes that mostly benefit the highest income taxpayers, would enable a U-turn, from the four straight highest deficits in world history to a balanced budget in 5 years. The roadmap for doing that is Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget, which has already been adopted by the Republican controlled House. (The Democrat majority Senate, by contrast, has never shown up for work.) This is classic tax reform, cutting rates and closing loopholes.

Obama’s Tax Plan: Higher Taxes, No Jobs
The only candidate in this race proposing to increase taxes is Barack Obama. He has already enacted increases in the top rates of virtually every major federal tax, which will go into effect January 1. That is when the tax increases of Obamacare will hit, and when the Bush tax cuts will expire. (Remedial education for Obama supporters: “Bush tax cuts expire” means tax increases).

As a result, the top two income tax rates are already scheduled in current law to increase by nearly 20 percent; the capital gains tax rate is slated to soar by nearly 60 percent; the tax rate on dividends will explode to nearly three times its current level; the Medicare payroll tax rate will rocket up by 62 percent for disfavored taxpayers (the nation’s job creators, investors, and successful small business entrepreneurs); and the death tax will rise further from the grave with a 57 percent increase in the top rate.

This is all on top of the corporate income tax rate, which under President Obama is already the highest in the industrialized world at 35 percent — or nearly 40 percent counting state corporate rates on average. Even Communist China has a lower corporate income tax of 25 percent. The average in the social welfare states of the EU is less than that. Germany has an 18 percent federal corporate rate. Canada, which has been booming under a conservative government, is now at 15 percent.

American businesses are uncompetitive in the global economy under these tax policies. But with President Obama there is no relief in sight. Instead he is continually barnstorming the country calling for still more tax increases. Under his so-called Buffett rule, the capital gains tax rate would increase by 100 percent, to the fourth highest in the industrialized world.

Then in 2014, the Obamacare mandate tax will go into effect, requiring every employer and every worker in the country to buy the expensive health insurance plan that the federal government decides you must have. That is another tax increase on the middle class, which — in addition to all the other tax increases in Obamacare they will have to pay — trashes Obama’s central campaign promise in 2008 not to raise taxes on working people.

Obama promised in 2008 that he would only increase tax rates on the wealthy — the nation’s job creators, investors, and small business owners — to the levels that existed under President Clinton. But this talking point, which he and his brain dead supporters are still repeating, is now long outdated. In total, these tax increases will raise top rates well beyond the Clinton rates, and in an even worse context. Other countries have learned the lessons of Reaganomics and slashed rates on capital in particular since then, and so they are already outcompeting America today. Thus, the combined effect of all those tax rate increases on “the rich” would be a renewed recession, double-digit unemployment, and a federal deficit that tops $2 trillion.

The Romney Tax Plan
Mitt Romney, in sharp contrast, actually has a very good tax plan that will get the economy booming again and restore the American Dream. The key is reducing tax rates, in particular marginal tax rates, which are the rates that applies to the next dollar of income. Marginal rates determine the incentive for productive activity, such as working, saving, investing, expanding businesses, starting businesses, or creating jobs.

Romney’s tax plan proposes to:

• Extend all of the Bush tax cuts that are scheduled to expire in January.

• Repeal the unfair death tax, which taxes yet again a lifetime of savings that have already been taxed multiple times.

• Repeal all of the Obamacare taxes.

• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which was originally meant to stop the richest from avoiding taxes altogether, but which increasingly applies to millions in the middle class.

• Cut income tax rates by one-fifth across the board. So the top rate would be reduced from 35 percent to the 28 percent originally established in the Reagan tax reform. The bottom tax rates, paid by working people and the middle class, would be reduced to 8 percent and 12 percent — even lower than under Reagan.

• Completely eliminate federal income taxes on long-term capital gains, dividends, and interest income for workers earning less than $100,000 and married couples earning less than $200,000.

• Reduce the federal corporate tax rate from 35 percent to a more internationally competitive 25 percent, close to the global average, which would restore international competitiveness for American business. That rate would be reduced further in conjunction with broader corporate tax reform to close the numerous and extensive loopholes.

• Allow a tax holiday for the repatriation of the trillions in profits that corporations have parked overseas to avoid the double taxation they face in bringing the money back to America. Over the long run he would eliminate that double taxation by adopting a system of territoriality, so taxes apply to corporate profits only in the country where those profits are earned. Romney also proposes to make the federal research and development tax credit permanent.

The central theme is actually to cut taxes on the middle class, multiple times, over and over. Romney nowhere proposes any tax increase on the middle class, or on anyone else for that matter. Obama’s allegation that Romney would raise taxes on the middle class by $2,000 per family is a complete fabrication. Obama did the same thing to Ryan’s budget plan, alleging a litany of supposed cuts that were nowhere to be found in the plan. Obama just made them up well.

Even the Tax Policy Center study that Obama cites for his charge says that Romney “promises that low- and middle-income households will pay no larger shares of federal taxes than they do now.” The study argues that in order to raise the same amount of money, the federal government would have to raise taxes on middle- and lower-class families — but it does not suggest that any such thing has been proposed by Romney. In addition, the study fails to give nearly adequate credit to the fact that Romney’s tax plan will increase economic growth and jobs — and thus, tax revenue. Reagan cut overall tax rates by far more than Romney is proposing, and during the 1980s, federal revenue doubled.

The bottom line is that Obama is disgracefully campaigning as a damn liar, to the great shame of the entire Democrat Party that he represents. It is old-fashioned Soviet propaganda to publicly campaign on the opposite of the truth, as Obama is doing. That reflects Obama’s Marxist upbringing and the nature of today’s Che Guevara Democrat Party.

Of course let Obama do it…..he does everything else….what were the Founding Fathers thinking of, puting checks and balances in the Constitution? Who ever heard of such a thing? Who needs a House of Representatives or Senate? Let the President do it all like all the other dictators in 3rd world countries, that works real well doesn’t it?

President Barack Obama is considering executive-branch action on U.S. cybersecurity after Congress failed to pass legislation to protect national security assets, a White House aide said.

“If the Congress is not going to act on something like this, then the president wants to make sure that we’re doing everything possible,” John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said today at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Senate Republicans last week blocked a bill backed by Obama that would have set up voluntary cybersecurity standards for operators of infrastructure such as power grids and water- treatment plants that are considered essential to national security.

Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups said the voluntary standards would be a back door to government regulation of companies. The bill was sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.

Brennan said opponents misrepresented the bill, which he said called for minimum performance standards. He didn’t specify what the White House is planning, or if it would take the form of an executive order.

“An executive order would be counterproductive and would cut short the proper legislative process, which needs to continue,” Matthew Eggers, senior director of national security at the Chamber of Commerce, said in an e-mailed statement.

“An executive order makes clear the administration’s intent to put a mandatory program into place to regulate businesses,” Eggers said.

‘Deeply Flawed’

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill in April that encourages businesses and government to share cyberthreat information, without setting standards for companies.

White House spokesman Jay Carney last week called the House bill “deeply flawed,” saying it threatens the privacy of consumer data and does nothing to protect the nation’s infrastructure.

Lieberman said today he still hoped that lawmakers would pass cybersecurity legislation. “But if Congress cannot get its act together to protect our nation from the real, urgent, and growing threat of cyber attack, then the President must do everything he can by executive order,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

“The problem is there are some things we should do to defend ourselves from cyber attack that can only be done by statute,” Lieberman said.

No surprise here….if this had been a Republican Tea Party bunch, they would have pepper sprayed and tazered them, then sent in a SWAT team. 100% political and Chicago style tactics is what we see here. Not to mention putting the DOJ on the top Romney donor, raiding Gibson guitar company (which is Republican) and no telling what else next.

The Obama Administration told law enforcement to “stand down” and not enforce the law against the violent #Occupy protesters according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch.

This was after the criminal group had already participated in several acts of violence and criminal behavior.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained recordsfrom the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicating that the General Services Administration (GSA), with the blessing of the Obama White House, instructed law enforcement officers to “stand down” and not arrest “Occupy Portland” protestors who were in violation of the law.

The records, obtained pursuant to a November 11, 2011, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, include internal DHS correspondence. One November 6, 2011, e-mail exchange between DHS/National Protection and Programs Directorate Chief of Staff Caitlin Durkovich and GSA Public Buildings Service Commissioner Robert Peck (who has since been fired) specifically related to Occupy Portland protests taking place on federal property in Portland:

I am sorry to be emailing you on a Sunday night, but wanted to let you know our Press Shop has received a couple of calls from Portland media outlets about a group of 11 protesters who again set up camp at Terry Shrunk Plaza in Portland last night. They have chained themselves to a large drum filled with concrete. GSA controls the permits and has asked FPS [Federal Protective Services] not to enforce the curfew at park and the prohibition on overnight encampments. Reporters have asked if we will be arresting the protestors as FPS did last week.

Our FPS Commander in Portland says they are standing down and following GSA’s request to only intervene if there is a threat to public safety.

Peck responds:

Caitlin: yes, that is our position; it’s been vetted with our Administrator and Michael Robertson, our chief of staff, and we have communicated with the WH [White House], which has afforded us the discretion to fashion our approach to Occupy issues…The arrests last week were carried out despite our request that the protesters be allowed to remain and to camp overnight…

This is unbelieveable that a Federal court would rule warrantless wiretapping is OK, it doesn’t matter if it was George Bush a Republican or Muslims that were wiretapped illegally, we still have (or we’re supposed to have) a Constitution. I”m sure they could have found ‘probable cause’ in order to get a warrant.

The federal government may spy on Americans’ communications without warrants and without fear of being sued, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a decision reversing the first and only case that successfully challenged President George W. Bush’s once-secret Terrorist Surveillance Program.

“This case effectively brings to an end the plaintiffs’ ongoing attempts to hold the executive branch responsible for intercepting telephone conversations without judicial authorization,” a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. (.pdf)

The case concerned a lower court decision in which two American attorneys — who were working with the now-defunct al-Haramain Islamic Foundation — were awarded more than $20,000 each in damages and their lawyers $2.5 million in legal fees after a tortured legal battle where they proved they were spied on without warrants.

They sued under domestic spying laws Congress adopted in the wake of President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal. The government appealed their victory, and the appeals court Tuesday dismissed the suit and the damages.

Jon Eisenberg, the lawyer for the two attorneys, said he may request the court to reconsider its decision with a larger panel of judges, or petition the Supreme Court.

“This case was the only chance to litigate and hold anybody accountable for the warrantless wiretapping program,” he said in a telephone interview. “As illegal as it was, it evaded accountability.”